Beekeeping: Why Choose a Top Bar Hive?

In urban backyard beekeeping, there are two main options for a bee hive design: the Langstroth and the Top Bar Hive. The Langstroth is used far more often than the Top Bar because it ultimately produces more honey. The Top Bar Hive, however, has many attributes to recommend it.

When I first began researching beekeeping, my goals were three-fold. First, I wanted raw natural honey raised on my own property. That furthers my sustainability goals. Second, I wanted to help restore the honey bee population which has been decimated by massive hive losses of unknown origin in the past several years. Third, I wanted to help pollinate my own vegetable and grain gardens, increasing the harvest. With those goals in mind, I set out to find the best beekeeping setup for a backyard.

Speaking with members of my local beekeeping society, there was only one choice: the Langstroth hive. Any mention of Top Bar Hives was met with pursed lips and a shaking of the head. The more I read about each type of hive, though, the more the Top Bar appealed to me and the sustainable lifestyle I try to lead. Here are the main reasons for choosing a Top Bar Hive:

1. Less expensive to set up and maintain

A Top Bar Hive is a long box with a tapered bottom and bars hanging across the top. The bees make their own comb starting at the underside of each bar. The Langstroth, on the other hand, requires multiple boxes with frames of pre-set wax comb starter. The Top Bar is a less expensive system to purchase and is easy to make- one reason that it is often used in developing countries. You can set up three or four Top Bars for the same cost as one Langstroth.

2. Allows bees to make honeycomb in a more natural way

This is the main attraction for me. A Langstroth forces the bees to make honeycomb of a pre-determined diameter. In nature, bees make different sized honeycomb cells based on type of bee, climate, the elements, and many other factors. Bees do best when allowed to protect themselves against the environment and Top Bar hives allow them to do that. Top Bar also allows the colony to make as many drone cells as it deems necessary. Commercial hives force the comb to be too small for most drones which lessens the breeding genetic pool. This may be connected to the disappearance of bees all over North America.

3. Allows beekeepers to keep a closer eye on the bees with less disturbance

A Langstroth requires the beekeeper to open it up completely and to shuffle heavy boxes to get at the next level of bees. Top Bar hives are all on one level and only require the removal of one bar at a time to inspect hives. Most TBH's have observation windows on the side so that much of the inspection can be done without disturbing the hive at all.

4. Doesn't re-use honeycomb

To harvest honey from a Top Bar hive, the entire comb is removed every time and the honey extracted from the comb. The bar is then replaced for the bees to make new comb. In Langstroth's, the comb in uncapped and the honey drained. The bees then repair and refill the comb and re-cap it. This allows any environmental toxins to build up in the comb over time. The TBH method produces more beeswax, which can be used for candles and soap, and the beeswax is always virgin, which increases its value.

Sources:

Why We Need Bees